Mourning Egyptians lay victims to rest

Around 53 people were killed and 271 injured in the Sunday's clashes

Africa

07 Ekim 2013 Pazartesi 17:51

World Bulletin/News Desk

Grieving relatives of the victims of Sunday's violent confrontations between security forces and anti-coup demonstrators accompanied the bodies of slain loved ones to their final resting places in several Egyptian cities on Monday.

Others, however, still awaited official permission to bury their slain relatives, killed on the same day that Egypt marked the 40th anniversary of its 1973 military victory over Israel.

Around 53 people were killed and 271 injured in the Sunday's clashes, according to the Egyptian Health Ministry.

While the ministry has so far refrained from disclosing victims' identities, eyewitnesses say all of them were pro-democracy demonstrators.

In the canal province of Ismailia, a large crowd of local residents took the bodies of two slain demonstrators to local cemeteries for burial.

The two were killed by police gunfire in Cairo's Ramses Square during Sunday's confrontations with security forces.

The funeral procession in the two villages in which the victims were buried turned into a mass protest against Egyptian army chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi.

Mourners chanted anti-Sisi slogans and accused the army and police of killing their loved ones who had merely been exercising their right to peaceful protest.

In Beni Sueif in central Egypt, meanwhile, thousands gathered outside a local hospital until hospital officials had granted official permission to bury a young local girl killed in a pro-democracy rally.

A video depicting the killing of Rofayda Mahmoud Youssef, a pharmacology student, has since gone viral on online social media.

While the video does not reveal the source of the bullet that killed her, it does show her falling to the ground and being carried away by fellow protesters before breathing her last.

Hundreds of Beni Sueif University students on Monday took part in a protest to demand investigations into the death of their colleague, urging the university president to take steps to uncover those responsible for Youssef's killing.

In the Nile Delta province of Menoufiya, hundreds also took part in a funeral procession for a local resident also killed in Ramses Square.

"Oh, lying media, Ahmed Shawki wasn't a terrorist," mourners chanted, referring to the victim who had been an engineering student.

Elsewhere in the same province, families accompanied the body of an 18-year-old man who was shot in the head in Ramses Square to his final resting place.

In the capital, meanwhile, hundreds of mourning Egyptians converged on Cairo's main Zeinhom Morgue in hopes of obtaining official permission to bury relatives slain in Sunday's clashes.

The National Alliance for the Defense of Legitimacy, which calls for the reinstatement of ousted President Mohamed Morsi, has accused the army of killing up to 50 pro-democracy demonstrators across the country on Sunday.